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The University of Oregon’s Asian Studies Program is an interdisciplinary instructional component of the College of Arts and Sciences. The program emphasizes study in Asian languages, history, society and culture, art and literature, politics and economics. Established in 1942, the Asian Studies Program is one of the oldest interdisciplinary programs in the United States to focus on Asia.

The Asian Studies Program is administered by the Asian Studies Faculty Committee, composed of faculty members with Asian specializations in over a dozen discipline areas. Degree programs offered include B.A. and M.A. programs that emphasize East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea), South Asia (particularly India and Pakistan) and, to a more limited extent, Southeast Asia (particularly Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). The program is supported by a strong faculty and on-going research activities.

Asian Studies students are required to complete two years of language training in addition to a rigorous program of classes covering several disciplines and national traditions. Chinese and Japanese are taught through the fifth year and Korean through the fourth year through the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL). Language acquisition and instruction are facilitated by the extensive collection of audio, video, and computer software media available to faculty members and students at the university’s Yamada Language Center.

Asian Studies students are eligible to participate in any of the exchange or study-abroad programs that the University of Oregon arranges with universities in Asia, through the university’s Office of International Affairs. Programs are available throughout Asia.

Activities

Dong Hoon Kim, Assistant Professor of Korean Film, Literature, and Cultural Studies, has written a book, “Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea.” Kim’s work is ground-breaking, in that it investigates film culture of the early 20th century (1910-1945), which has not been widely studied or written about. Korea’s rule by Japan began at the end of the Korean Empire in 1910 and ended at the conclusion of World War II, in 1945, when U.S. and the U.S.S.R. captured the Korean peninsula.

Kim brings new perspectives to the nexus of colonialism, modernity, film

Former Asian Studies graduate student Brandon Folse traveled to Montreal in August to present a work-in-progress at the ASA Mini Conference Fellow Travelers on Different Roads: The Intersections of Economic Sociology and Organizations, Occupations, and Work. Co-authored with Professor Arafaat Valiani, “Legitimating Chinese Birth Markets in the United States through Quasi Metrics,” investigates the role of quasi metrics in legitimizing Chinese birth tourism markets in the United States.

The topic of Chinese birth tourism, in which expecting Chinese parents travel to the U.S. to give birth